'Our ten-year fight to win justice from film scheme fraudster with four aliases'

Fraud: Anastasia St Raphael, who is also known as Trisha Allison, Patricia Potterton or Catherine Potterton

The woman from the glamorous world of film production had her audience hooked.

High-flying executives from City banks and management consultancies listened intently to Anastasia St Raphael explaining what she boasted was a ‘unique low risk, high return investment proposition’.

But the scheme, apparently designed to take advantage of Government film tax breaks, has turned out to be anything but.

Ten years after the gathering at the Institute of Directors’ imposing headquarters in Pall Mall, central London, one of the investors has finally won compensation after the High Court ruled he was defrauded by St Raphael, who has been ordered to repay £185,000.

At the heart of the story is a woman who has gone by four different names. She is listed on the electoral roll as Trisha Anastasia Allison, but she has also been known as Patricia Catherine Potterton and Catherine Patricia Potterton in addition to Anastasia St Raphael.

As many as 60 investors bought into St Raphael’s pitch. Investors were told to reclaim the tax they had paid for the past two years and put the rebate into the film scheme.

The money would be invested in qualifying films and they could get back 20 per cent of their tax rebates.

But Judge Richard Seymour said in a judgment on the case delivered last week that the scheme ‘appears to describe a fairly uncomplicated fraud on the Revenue, with an “investor”, through Allison [St Raphael], making an inflated claim for losses sustained in investment in the production of films – two and a half times the amount of his potentially available tax refund – and the proceeds being paid to a vehicle controlled by Allison [and her business partner] out of which 20 per cent was paid back to the “investor”.’

Celebrating the victory: Dennis and Claire Horner with son, Jack, and surrogates Cheryl Richardson and Cathy Sidaway, right

He added: ‘The beauty of it, from the perspective of whoever devised it, was that it was largely free of risk to them. If the Revenue accepted without question the claim for refund of tax paid, the loss was sustained by the Revenue.

‘If the Revenue accepted a claim and made a refund, but then disallowed the claim, it would be up to the taxpayer, and not to whomever devised the scheme, that the Revenue would look for reimbursement.’

More...

St Raphael had not reckoned, however, on the steely determination of one of her victims to pursue her for the cash. Dennis Horner, who put his tax rebates from 2001 and 2002 into the scheme, and his wife Claire were last week celebrating a judgment that has taken them ten years, while suffering numerous heartaches, to obtain.

Horner’s first wife died of breast cancer – and Claire is currently going through treatment for the same disease, the fourth time she has had it. In 2010 the pair went through the process of having a baby through a donated egg and a surrogate mother in what was said to be a first in British fertility care.

A management consultant and chartered accountant, Horner is the chair of trustees at the Bowel Cancer UK charity while his wife works as a part-time magistrate and nurse. Dozens of other investors were also persuaded to put their rebates in the scheme, but only the Horners have fought to reclaim their cash. The High Court ruled last week that St Raphael had deceived Horner over the nature of the scheme at the Pall Mall meeting.

The judge said: ‘Her evidence concerning the events of January 13, 2003 was simply not true. She had given various accounts at different times and each of her accounts seemed to be inconsistent with whatever documents survived which appeared to shed light on the matter.

‘The position Allison adopted at the trial – that she had not attended a meeting on January 13, 2003 at the Institute of Directors and had never met Horner – just made no sense.’

The investment funds that Horner and others put their money into were closed down shortly after being set up – and accounts for them filed at Companies House do not give any indication of where the money was invested.

At the time of the schemes the Revenue adopted a ‘process now, check later’ policy for rebates. The taxman began an investigation into investors’ tax returns in 2004 and quickly concluded that the film partnerships were ‘a sham’.

Investors were told to repay the tax rebates and to sue St Raphael if they wished to recover their cash.

St Raphael of Plumstead, South London, and who currently goes by the name of Trisha Allison, told Financial Mail she is planning to appeal against the High Court judgment.